The Nation: The Legal Battle Over Censorship

THE confrontation was historic. For the first time in U.S. history, the
Government had gone to court to suppress publication of a major article
in a major newspaper. In so doing, the Nixon Administration revived
that ancient antithesis of a free press, the long discredited practice
of "prior restraint." For its part, the Government claimed that never
before had a newspaper published top-secret information that would
endanger the national interest.

The drama began last Monday night after the New York Times had already
published two installments of...